Robert McKinley, Senior Analyst/Editor
Robert McKinley is an analyst of the payments industry on a daily basis for 32 years covering payment cards and payment systems from both the business side and the consumer side. McKinley is the retired founder and chief executive of RAM Research, CardWeb and CardTrak. In his prior position, McKinley has participated in more than 10,000 documented news media interviews, testified as an expert witness in two separate $billion+ U.S. anti-trust trials, testified before the U.S. Congress, assisted the GAO with paymentsIMG_2006 (1).jpeg reports, chaired numerous business conferences and provided C-Suite opinion to a multitude of Fortune 500 companies. In retirement, he has continued developing and funding digital media assets as well as contributing payments related analysis/content to a broad list of online publishers, including CardFlash, CardTrak and CardData. McKinley is also a national certified mentor with the non-profit SCORE organization with a focus on assisting Fintech startups. www.robert-mckinley.com

[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”0″ ihc_mb_template=”1″] U.S. Credit Cards-in-Force (CIF) among the Top 4 issuers edged up by a mere 1.9% year-on-year (YOY) at the end of the first quarter (1Q/16) to an estimated 236.1 million cards, compared to 232.9 million in 4Q/15, and 231.6 million for 1Q/15. Capital One blew the other three top issuers away…

British spend on global travel is predicted to reach £63.4 billion in 2025, up 58% on 2015. On average, each UK household is set to spend £9,300 annually by 2025, up from £6,500 in 2015. According to a study, conducted with Oxford Economics for Visa, the UK will rank as the 2nd highest spenders on…

[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”0″ ihc_mb_template=”1″] Gross dollar volume (GDV) for Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards (credit + debit) in the U.S. climbed 9.0% year-on-year (YOY) in 1Q/16 reaching a record $1401 billion. Visa led the way in the first quarter posting a 10.0% YOY gain for U.S. GDV. Visa reported first quarter GDV…

In Other News: FISERV (Notifi); CHECKALT (Klik); SAFETYPAY (growth); and CARDX (Paychex). FISERV – Fiserv has launched a platform for the delivery of real-time alerts, enabling financial institutions to meet growing expectations among consumers and small businesses for information that is timely and actionable. Notifi from Fiserv consolidates information from across a financial institution’s systems…

North American Bancard Holdings, (NAB) has added a new feature, called tip adjust, to select EMV-ready Ingenico and VeriFone POS terminals. This new feature addresses one of the biggest limitations of EMV for the restaurant and service industry. One of the biggest drawbacks of EMV for the restaurant and service industry has been the inability…

MasterCard and Vodafone Egypt have completed the migration of two million Vodafone Cash mobile wallets to MasterCard’s open mobile payments ecosystem. The migration also enables MasterCard to power Vodafone Egypt mobile money service, Vodafone Cash, by processing all financial transactions through MasterCard’s Mobile Payment Gateway platform, which MasterCard has worked closely with the Egyptian Banks…

When it comes to mobile devices, in general, 72% of Millennials and 64% of all business travelers use mobile devices to check travel itineraries one or more times a day during trips, and 55% of Millennials and 44% of all business travelers use them to check their expenses at least once a day while on…

Oberthur Technologies has unveiled its new multi-payment dual interface card developed on OT’s Global Platform and Java-based operating system. OT’s COSMO Fly v5.8 is the first dual interface product which includes the latest features from both Visa and MasterCard. It is the first MasterCard M/Chip Advance v1.2 certified products with multi-application requirements and also conforms…

Prepaid card king Green Dot has ankled William Jacobs as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Jacobs has served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Global Payments, a payment processing services company, since June 2014. Jacobs also served as Lead Independent Director of that company and as one of its business advisors…

Discover has joined the other three networks to offer accelerated chip cards. Discover Quick Chip will reduce the time a chip card needs to remain in the point-of-sale terminal, making the checkout process more convenient for merchants and cardholders. The new option for merchants to streamline the checkout process for all chip cards leveraging Discover,…

Worldpay Total has been launched into mainland Europe, providing an Omni-channel payments service designed to help brands deliver a consistent and convenient shopping experience across all sales channels, from their website to the Point-of-Sale. Worldpay Total will provide a unified alternative to the approach currently adopted by many brands which often requires them to work…

Experian has launched DataArc 360 powered by Experian Pandora, part of Experian Data Integrity Services. The new data quality solution is designed to check the consumer credit information provided by data furnishers prior to submission to credit bureaus. Experian’s solution allows data suppliers to take more of a proactive approach to ensuring the accuracy of…